Hi, MPR Politics Podcasts here. This is Courtney and I have just finished my very last sunrise

morning run on the home and air force base here in New Mexico, where I've just been to last

three months working on Operation Allies. Welcome to help Afghan refugees get resettled.

This podcast was recorded at 1.06 pm Eastern time on Tuesday, February 1.

Things may have changed since the time that you've heard this, but I know for a fact that

thousands of Afghan families will have been resettled across the country into their new homes.

Hopefully with arms open wide to welcome them. All right, here's the show.

Oh, that is a big job. Big, big job. Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Usma Khaled.

I cover the White House. I'm Franco Ardoniaz. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. And today on the show,

we're going to talk about some recent newsy developments out of the Justice Department.

Back in 2018, Congress passed the first step back, a criminal justice reform law that was signed

into law by former President Donald Trump. This law was supposed to help people secure early

release from federal prison, but so far there have been big racial disparities and how the Justice

Department is deciding who to let out. So let's just start there. Carrie, you have done reporting

on this. So what is the tool that was created by the first step back to make these decisions? Yeah,

sure. This tool is called Pattern. It's an algorithm that was created by some outside consultants

in connection with the Justice Department. And there have been problems since the beginning,

in part because when Congress passed this law, they gave DOJ a very short window of time to create

this tool. Part of that time overlap with the government shutdown. We all remember. And the

consultants decided to take into account some methods the federal bureau of prisons had already

been using to rate the risk of recidivism of people in federal prison. So there were problems

...